PAUL CEZANNE
Mt St Victoire
1895
Oil on canvas
What were the concerns of Cezanne in his art?
How did he reflect those concerns in this painting?
NEO-IMPRESSIONISM

The Artist-Scientist
1859 - 1891

1859 -- 1891

Influences
Piero della Francesca
The Flagellation c. 1469
~ Visited Louvre; studied works of:
- Classical Greek sculpture
- Italian & northern Renaissance
(e.g. Piero della Francesca)
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Influences
- Early artist of the Italian Renaissance.
- Interested in geometry & mathematics.
- Painted mainly religious works with simple serenity & clarity.
Influences
The Baptism
1442
The Flagellation
1469
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~ Also influenced by:
- Ingres
- Rembrandt
- Delacroix
Influences
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Influences
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
The Valpincon Bather
1808
- Works characterized by purity of line, enamel-like colouring, calligraphic line & expressive contour.
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Influences
Rembrandt
Anatomy Lecture of Dr Nicholaes Tulp
1632
- Use of luxuriant brushwork & rich colour.
- Master of light & shadow; studied lines, light, shade & colour.
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Influences
Eugene Delacroix
Dante & Virgil Crossing the Styx
1822
- Romantic painter.
- Remarkable use of colour.
~ Made use of many unblended colours forming what at a distance looks like a unified whole.
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• Interested in theoretical writings on vision & colour by Michel-Eugene
Chevreul:
Colours are purer when mixed in the human eye.
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- To synthesize the colour experiments of the Impressionists with the classical structure of Renaissance. (i.e., to make the moment enduring )
- To combine concepts of pictorial space, traditional perspective
& the newest scientific discoveries in the perception of colour
& light.
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1881:
~ Developed a highly original drawing technique in black conte crayon:
- Extracted simplified & very solid figures by subtle & exact control of tones.
The Echo
1883
Woman Fishing
1884 - 5
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1883:
Developed the technique of painting -Pointillism
Pointillism = A system of applying paint in isolated dots of pure colour .
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Can you read the numbers?
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Example of Seurat’s Pointillist technique
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Examples of Seurat’s Pointillist technique:
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Technique of Pointillism
Break down colour present in nature to constituent hues
Transfer them to canvas in a pure/primary state -- dots/small strokes
Human eye to re-constitute hues -optical mixture
In doing so, preserve colours of nature in all actuality & vividness.
* Unmixed dots of paint resulted in luminous, brilliantly lightfilled paintings.
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- Derived from Seurat’s “La Grande Jatte”
- Term was coined by Felix Feneon in 1886.
“ Peinture au point ” (Painting by dots)
~ Pointillism / Divisionism is also known as Neo-
Impressionism
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Golden Section
- Known as the Divine proportion .
A M
1-x x
B
- Ratio of the shorter line (AM) to the longer line (MB) is equal to the ratio of the longer line (MB) to the entire line (AB).
1-x/x = x/1
1-x = x square
X = 0.6180339
- A rectangle with sides in this ratio exhibits a special beauty.
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The Golden Section and the Golden Rectangle
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The Golden Section (Ratio) in Seurat’s Paintings
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Bathers at Asnieres
1883 - 4
• Note down the subject matter (recognizable stuff) in this work
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Superimposition of the golden rectangle on Seurats’s artwork
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The Golden Section and the Golden Rectangle x
1-x/x = x/1
1-x
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La Grande Jatte
1884 - 86
Can you point out the uses of the Golden Section?
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Circus Sideshow (La Parade)
1887 - 88 Can you point out the uses of the Golden Section?
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The Bridge at Courbevoie
1886 - 7
Can you point out the uses of the Golden Section?
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Le Chahut
1889 - 90
Can you point out the uses of the Golden Section?
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The Circus
1890
Can you point out the uses of the Golden Section?
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Woman powdering Herself
1890
Can you point out the uses of the Golden Section?
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Seurat’s work:
- Subject matter: Modern urban life
- Technique: Disciplined & painstaking application of dots
- Composition: Well-balanced; resolving his pictures into immobile patterns.
Seurat: “I want to make modern people move about as if they were on the Parthenon frieze, in their most essential characteristics.”
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La Grande Jatte
1884 - 86
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Georges Seurat
La Grande Jatte
1884 - 86
What similarities can you see in these two works?
Auguste Renoir
La Moulin de la Galette
1876
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Seurat attached symbolic meaning to lines & colours:
Cheerfulness
Sad
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Vincent van Gogh
Interior of a restaurant
1887
Henri Matisse
Luxe calm et volupte
1904-5
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Giacomo Balla
Street Light
1909
Pointillist technique was influential in the Italian art movement of Futurism.
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The theory of colour & light were later explored by the Abstract
Expressionists & Colour-Field painters of WW2.
Mark Rothko
Orange & Yellow
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- Systematic artist:
- Deliberate methods & precise harmonies
- Applied his theories of colour, line and composition to achieve harmony

1.
Name TWO influences on Seurat.
2.
What is the aim of Seurat’s art?
3.
What is the painting technique developed by Seurat known as?
4.
What is the mathematical theory used by Seurat known as?
5.
Write down FIVE words that you will use to describe the composition found in Seurat’s work.
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Bathers at Asnieres
1883 - 4
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Bathers at Asnieres
1883 - 4
Also read up article from http://www.guardian.co.uk/artan ddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010
/apr/14/george-seurat-bathersat-asnieres-art
Asnières is an industrial suburb west of Paris on the River
Seine. The present work shows a group of young workmen taking their leisure by the river.
This was the first of Seurat's large-scale compositions . He drew conté crayon studies for individual figures using live models, and made small oil sketches on site which he used to help design the composition and record effects of light and atmosphere. Some 14 oil sketches and 10 drawings survive. The final composition, painted in the studio , combines information from both.
While the painting was not executed using Seurat's pointillist technique, which he had not yet invented, the artist later reworked areas of this picture using dots of contrasting colour to create a vibrant, luminous effect. For example, dots of orange and blue were added to the boy's hat.
The simplicity of the forms and the use of regular shapes clearly defined by light recalls paintings by the
Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca . In his use of figures seen in profile, Seurat may also have been influenced by ancient Egyptian art. http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/georges-seurat-bathers-at-asnieres
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In Seurat’s paintings. we can find:
- Strong interest in an exact & articulate composition .
~ Emphasis on compositional balance.
- Use of simplified silhouetted shapes .
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La Grande Jatte
1884 - 86
Influenced by the Impressionists ’ experimentation with color,
Postimpressionist painter Georges Seurat worked with innovative techniques. On an enormous canvas, the artist depicted city dwellers gathered at a park on La Grande Jatte (literally, "the big platter"), an island in the River Seine . All kinds of people stroll, lounge, sail, and fish in the park.
Using newly discovered optical and color theories, Seurat rendered his subject by placing tiny, precise brush strokes of different colors close to one another so that they blend at a distance. Art critics subsequently named this technique
Divisionism, or Pointillism . The artist visited La Grande Jatte many times, making drawings and more than 30 oil sketches to prepare for the final work. With his precise method and technique, Seurat conceived of his painting as a reform of Impressionism. The precise contours, geometric shapes, and measured proportions and distances in Seurat’s masterpiece (not to mention its monumental size) contrast significantly with the small, spontaneous canvases of
Impressionism.
Over the past several decades, many scholars have attempted to explain the meaning of this great composition . For some, it shows the growing middle class at leisure. Others see it as a representation of social tensions between modern city dwellers of different social classes, all of whom gather in the same public space but do not communicate or interact.
http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Impressionist/pages/IMP_7.shtml
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La Grande Jatte
1884 - 86
Creating La Grande Jatte
For A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 Seurat converted a wellknown Impressionist site into an open stage. Across his canvas he positioned a variety of characters that he had developed in his many drawn and painted studies for the work. From these
“auditions,” Seurat eventually selected the performers for the final production, combining the functions of both playwright and director.
Stage:
Seurat used as his setting a small section of the elongated island in the Seine just beyond Paris’s city limits. The many dining and dancing establishments, wine shops, and shipbuilders’ yards located at different points on the island did not make their way into his work nor did the factories across the river, which had undermined the island’s social cachet. Seurat focused instead on the green park at the far northwestern tip, facing the town of
Courbevoie .
Cast:
Seurat’s canvas incorporates 3 dogs, 8 boats, and 48 people who congregate on a Sunday to enjoy and parade around in “nature.”
The cast of modern characters includes soldiers, boaters, the fashionably and casually dressed, the old and the young, families, couples, and single men and women. http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/seurat/seurat_themes.html
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La Grande Jatte
1884 - 86
Plotlines:
Unlike the setting, Seurat’s plot is not readily identifiable. La Grande
Jatte conveys grand solemnity in counterpoint with a wry sense of humor. Seurat’s stated ambition was to “make modern people in their essential traits move about as they do on [ancient Greek] friezes and place them on canvases organized by harmonies.” He introduced an element of irony by suggesting a sense of timelessness —in the frozen quality of the figures —while also insisting on a very up-to-the-moment awareness of fashion. The couple in the foreground presents a striking and elegant silhouette, but they can also be seen as somewhat comically puffed-up fashion plates involved in the ritual of self-display.
Relationships between figures are implied, but the characters’ overt lack of interaction makes it difficult to identify or even imagine the plot. Some have argued that the social order Seurat so elegantly constructed is more tenuous than his rigid composition at first suggests. While the figures appear to fit seamlessly within the whole, their exact social stations and motivations remain open to speculation and debate.
Sets and Sources: Past and Present
Seurat was determined to create a new classicism that would remake
Impressionism by eliminating the accidental and the momentary, while preserving the vitality of life in forms that embodied enduring ideals. He drew on a variety of sources —ancient and modern, serious and comic— to realize his ambition through a subtle interweaving of seeming contraries. Critics recognized the divergent visual sources that give the figures both modern flatness and anonymity and at the same time a pharaonic (ancient Egyptian) sense of timelessness and seriousness associated with large-scale history painting.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/seurat/seurat_themes.html
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- Seurat compensated the complexity of his technique by radical simplification of forms.
~ Moved away from faithful rendering of natural appearances.
~ Exploration of interesting & expressive patterns.
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